Wednesday, November 06, 2013

The last few weeks were big at the Kelley household, my youngest officially learned to ride his bike. It's one of those milestones that squarely hits me as a teacher. Motivation isn't a problem, (watching his older brother take off is enough.) I can tell him all about how to balance, steer and brake. But, there's nothing but for him to do it. And to fall. That's the hard part for me of course, (by the way, the picture isn't of him falling over, but trying some 'tricks' he saw his cousin do.)

And MOST importantly for me to get out of the way. He's in charge and off he goes, making mistakes in as safe a manner as possible, much like school.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

This week I had the opportunity to learn from an incredibly enthusiastic group of educators in South Africa! The EdTechTeam offered a Google in Education Summit to an audience of educators who couldn't be more receptive.

One of my favorite stories about the summit actually had to do with my son. I was lucky enough to be able to bring my eldest with me to Cape Town. It would be the first time going to Africa for both of us and we didn't know what to expect. Needless to say, we had an incredible experience and I know he'll remember it forever.

At one point, he wanted to rest in the rental car we had parked next to the building I was presenting in. (The jet lag was hard on him, but he keep up like a trooper.) So I set him up with snacks, a book and his iPad. I would check on him every few minutes. And at one point he sent me this email:

I was quite a proud dad, he had figured out how to connect to the wifi, shoot me an email and let me know he needed the keys to roll the window down. So I headed right out (I was next door to the car) opened the door and saw this:

It wouldn't surprise me at all if he'd never actually manually rolled a window down before. I decided to take it as a metaphor of how many of our students come with some technical expertise, but still need our support and guidance. (No matter how clever with an iPad they are :)

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Another amazing Building Learning Communities Conference for me and my students. I've been bringing students to BLC since 2006 and every year has been provocative and educational, but this year it felt like my students were more engaged than they ever have been.

They had the opportunity chat with Alan November and he asked what they were taking away from the conference. They answered with all the exciting ideas they'd picked up, but then he challenged them. He challenged them to go back this year to school and do something about those ideas. (We've scheduled a follow up in October to see what they've come up with.)

That's the type of experience you don't get in the classroom. Sure, I can tell them to try new things, but when someone outside challenges your kids to be amazing, magic can happen.

Additionally, the Tech Sherpas invited attendees to join them in a live show from BLC. They were able to talk about some of the work they did there and their experience throughout the conference.

And of course, all the people they meet from around the world. How often do you have the opportunity to give authentic feedback to others (like the awesome folks at TechSmith) and be listened too, taken seriously and have your suggestions realized in actual products.

I also wanted to give a shout out to Melanie Spencer from Canberra, Australia who was inspired by the students to start their own Tech Sherpa team, FANTASTIC!

Monday, June 10, 2013

Below is our Tech Sherpa coverage. In a very 'meta-moment' there is a section where the Tech Sherpa students are streaming as the Channel 5 reporter interviews them.

WABI Channel 5 coverage

Newport -
The RSU 19 middle schoolers were at school on Saturday, but none of
them were sitting in a classroom. They got to show off to friends and
family all that they have done this school year.

Keith Kelley is the Integrated Technology Teacher, he hopes the Student
Technology Showcase is a learning experience for kids and parents.

"Our robot kids that built the robots are now having to describe to mom
and dad how to run it... so they learn a lot from that," Kelley said.

Connor Verreault is in the 6th grade at RSU. Saturday he got to learn
about the robots. "I think it would be more fun to interact with the
robots and build them for the end of the seventh grade year," he said.

The students host a live web "hangout" once a week during the year. They
were hosting one Saturday as well. During the web chats they answer
questions about technology from teachers around the world.

Jared Gay is one student who helps facilitate the online chats, "you can
help teachers everywhere and that just always feels good and you know
that your helping their students and it reaches out to them," he said.

Carol Burnette is one student's grandmother. She was excited to see what
he learns at school, "it's a great experience, it's wonderful to see
what the kids are doing and RSU has some great things that people should
know," she said.

Riley Savage spent the year learning to build a skateboard, something she didn't think she could do.

"When I come into IT I feel like I can do anything that I want with my
skateboard. After I did that I was like I can't believe I finished it
and then after I did the grip tape and the trunks and the wheels I was
like wow, I'm done" she says.

This was the 9th RSU Student Technology Showcase, and organizer hope to make it even bigger next year.Channel 5 Wabi Story

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

"What do you think of the proposal for Maine's 1to1 laptop initiative?"

This weekend the Maine Department of Education announced the next device for the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.(MLTI) The MLTI program has operated since 2002 and offered Apple devices to 7th and 8th grade students across the state of Maine. This year for the first time the DOE has gone with Windows PC, the HP ProBook. Here is the full article in the Portland Press Herald.

We discuss some of the implications of this shift for students, teachers and the state at large. It's important to note that as of the latest information, districts will still have the option of buying into the other hardware choices (iPads and MacAirs) if they foot the cost of the difference.

My personal feelings is that I know it matters what platform you use, but less and less than ever. If the web is your production platform, then the devices just become the conduit to your content. That said, there is undoubtably a trade off. There are local programs and features that do not have the equivalent in cloud services yet. A spoon for soup and fork for spaghetti. But that's changing, and all the major players know it. Microsoft's latest version of Office saves your files in their Skydrive (cloud storage) BY DEFAULT. That's a huge shift in functionality and assumptions about users. One of drawbacks of this is how each company is building their own digital fiefdom, and not playing well with others.
iCloud vs. Google vs. Skydrive vs. Dropbox, etc.

We don't want them to build these artificial digital ecosystems where you have to choose one closed garden over the other (think AOL circa 2005.) Facebook is pushing this, they are the one service to rule them all, the difference is there's no cost to changing social networks. Hardware costs money and all the apps we buy for them will not transfer. Right now when I buy music, I buy it on Amazon which downloads a copy to iTunes which syncs with Google Music. Yes, I now have the song in each service, but it's quite a Rube Goldberg way of accomplishing this.

Friday, April 26, 2013

This week on the Tech Sherpa Show we discuss the online course I created that our middle school students take to prepare them for the high school. The site is www.learningmodule.com and it is a Google Site template that anyone is welcome to take a copy of and adapt for their own needs.

First, for students to prepare the new Google Apps account they will be using in the high school. They subscribe to school calendars, organize their Google Drive folders and take a copy of our Student Portfolio. All in preparation for our digital portfolio system.

Second, the students have experienced learning purely online. There is no class time set aside for students to complete the mini-course. There are 5 tasks, though none of them are particularly arduous. The point is for them to complete school work, (without a teacher prompting them over their shoulder.) Also, there are a handful of technology skills embedded in the task. For example, watching a short video and recording a response. This is not a difficult task, but in completing it, the students have shown they can reflect, digitize that reflection and hand it in.

Monday, April 22, 2013

If you are the administrator for Google Apps for Education you're probably thinking ahead about the upcoming summer break and might be wondering what you're going to do about your student accounts. If you want to pause student access to their account for the summer, the easiest way is to simply reset the password. There are a couple ways to accomplish this, if you're into command lines and enabling APIs a great resource is GAM or Google Apps Manager. You can find GAM here:

and replacing DOMAIN .ORG with your own Google Apps domain address. Once you have the CSV file upload it into a Google Spreadsheet. This file can be sorted or filtered if you only want to reset certain users. The final spreadsheet should only have these column headers:

Username | First Name | Last Name | Password

By replacing the password column with one that you set. Then, click File and select Download as .csv file.

3) Go back to the Google Apps for Education Dashboard. Click the Users tab and select More actions - Bulk upload users.

Make sure you check Update existing accounts so passwords will be reset. You can also force users to reset their password after they have logged in.

There are Third Party Apps in the Marketplace that will help with some of this process. One is Flash Panel which is free and helps with user management as well as other features. Also, if you are looking for an easier way to sort, filter and manage the users, click the link for a copy of the

About Me

Starting my career as an elementary teacher at the Parawai School in New Zealand, I am currently the Educational Technologist at Regional School Unit #19 in central Maine. I have provided support to educators for over a decade and conducted professional development across the world. I have always loved working with students with a special focus on having them teach others. I work with student presenters in a weekly live tech support show broadcast at www.techsherpas.org. ACTEM’s 2013 Educator of the year, I have brought students to numerous conferences such as Maine's ACTEM conference, Alan November's Building Learning Communities and the Google Teacher Academy.